Outlaws
by BackseatBandits
Summary: The last of his kind, Sasuke finds out the true strength of his bonds. Wild West AU. Eventual SasuSaku.


**A.N. Something fun to write about, I thought. This is a wild west version of the shinobi world. Not everyone is able to use chakra, and even the best shinobi can only use about 5 jutsu. That way guns and jutsu are at about equal measure.**

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The women and children were first.

The smell of gunpowder and blood was enough to make even the hardiest of men sick to their stomachs, and the sight enough for them to weep. Guns fired loudly at point blank range, and those left alive to see the bodies of their wives and children go limp would also be deafened by the shots. Still, they did not move, for they too felt the cold steel barrels pressed against the back of their heads. They could not hear the laughter of the executioners— these law abiding men of Konoha that joked over the shame of not being able to use the women before their time. It was a small mercy to only see them fall into the pit they had been forced to dig in silence.

Fugaku, the leader of the clan, was even more fortunate.

He had afforded his children both the time and power they needed to survive, giving them his eyes before his final battle. With the mangekyou sharingan, they at least had a chance to escape the punishment for the coup d'etat he had led. At the same time, it helped him escape the fate of watching his beloved Mikoto, a true beauty among Uchiha, fall dead from his side and into the mass grave. He did no flinch at her death, for she too had fought well to protect the last of the clan. "Are you watching, Itachi? Shisui, Sasuke," he murmured quietly to himself. "Do not be a witness to the death of a failure. I hope you have run far away from this place, for the Uchiha name will be yours to carry. You three should not have been involved...for now with our name, you now carry the sigil of an outlaw."

From the distance, they watched him as he raised his head up to the sky. With a second round of fire, he too would fall into the hole. Once the men had been executed, the distant figures of the executioners would drop their weapons and pick up shovels, pilling mounds of dirt over the massive Uchiha grave.

"You have been spared a terrible sight...but it's too late...to save you from the curse of our eyes, Sasuke," Itachi murmured. He looked to his brother, who's eyes had been bandaged by the more experienced Shisui. He messed with these dressings, whimpering of he pain that came with the impromptu operation that had taken place in the midst of the night.

"Your father wanted you to have the Mangekyou Sharingan, Itachi. You could have taken them," Shisui pointed out to his younger cousin. He kept his voice down and his head low, while also pressing down the even younger Sasuke'. Only Itachi was bold enough to peek ahead with his sharingan activated to it's truest potential.

"A foolish endeavor," he replied. "I knew that I would gain those eyes today. Besides, if one of us was unable to see for even half of a day, we would have all died. The only one able to spare their sight for the duration of the recovery was Sasuke."

Shisui scratched the back of his head with his free hand, uncertainty hinted in his tone. "I guess so. Still, who knows what's going to happen now? We're wanted men now."

"For now, we leave this place. There's nothing more to see." With that statement, he slid down beside Shisui and tipped his hat forward,only the blood red glow of the sharingan visible from the shadows that obscured his eyes. "We will wait until the sand is cool and the sky is dark. It's the only safe time for us to travel, when the sheriff's men are too far away to catch us."

This was what they would do. With sharingan activated, the three waited in the shade of a massive boulder, only a few hundred meters away from the half way dug, unmarked grave of the Uchiha. Long hours without food and water passed by until the darkness overcame the sky, and it was then that they would rise from their hiding place, to find that everyone was gone. It was almost as barren and untouched as it had been the previous morning, with the exception of a huge mound of dirt that was still left to be placed into the whole. However, instead of passing it by or simply walking the opposite way, the Uchiha boys would approach it, with Shisui being the only one to slide inside.

The ground beneath him was no firm, but instead lumpy and soft. He knew that he stood on only a few inches of dirt, with the bodies of hundreds beneath that. The stench in the air indicated that the lowermost bodies had already begun to decay.

"What are you doing," Itachi questioned with a slight intensity in his voice. His body was stiff, and his eyes displayed a sense of outrage that was thankfully left unseen by the youngest Uchiha. "These are our friends...our families!"

Shisui tilted his head back up towards Itachi, his expression every bit as serious. "Exactly. This place is the larges collection of sharingan eyes in all of existance. The most powerful kekkei genkai of all...we were the sole group to survive from the feud between ourselves and the Senju. Imagine...a treasure trove of power, left unmarked and unregulated by the Konoha forces. What would happen if one of them might have wanted this type of power for themselves? We Uchiha have a duty to keep our secret out of the hands of others. Now...if your father was a smart man...he might have just taken those secrets with him to the grave." Without further comment, he would kneel down and use his hands to move the dirt aside, only to be faced with the body of Fugaku Uchiha. Pulling off his massive coat and that of two other nearby Uchiha lieutenants, he tossed them up and over edge of the hole.

Itachi did not hesitate to look into his father's overcoat, only to find a massive bundle of papers held together by strings and seals. With his Sharingan, he was able to see the small indents that allowed for one to unseal the dossier using chakra. "I see. So he told you about this."

Shisui would instantaneously body flicker out of the hole and to his cousin's side, his arms folded. "You were working for Danzo. Captain Fugaku didn't fully want to entrust you with all the details of the coup, in case you were to double cross us. He wasn't wrong. After all, it was Danzo's plan to double cross you and kill Sasuke that made you turn your gun back towards Konoha, wasn't it?" When the response gained him no response, Shisui smiled knowingly and leaned in towards his cousin. "You don't have to hide it, Itachi. I know what it's like...wanting to save someone that close to you. That's why I couldn't go against you, no matter what action you chose. I don't think a single Uchiha has it in them to kill their own younger brother."

Finally, the middle Uchiha would relent, shutting his eyes for shut a moment in acknowledgment before opening them wide, allowing for the whole pit to catch alight. Black flames consumed the grave, slowly destroying the bodies of the fallen. They flickered but shared no light. Only the warms from the fire would them to know that it was there. The two elder Uchiha boys stared at this burning hole until the bodies beneath were nothing more than heaps of ash and soot that scattered to the winds. It was then that the flames would die. There was no ceremony for them. No way to confer their bodies to the pure-lands, if that was where they would go. The two only took the youngest by the hand and began to walk away.

Sasuke had scarcely turned eight, and it was clear that the longer they lingered in the desert, the more the sounds would frighten him. He had stayed mostly silent since the operation, but now that they were safe for the moment being, he would once again put his hands on the bandages and tilt his head up into a random direction, unable to discern by which side his brother was. "Itachi, what's going to happen now? What was it that dad was keeping from us?"

While the older brother did not respond, Shisui smiled. For different reasons, the young child was kept in the dark over everything. The coup, the discrimination that they faced, all of it. As a clan, they were supposed to trust each other to the very core. It was evident on the face of the boy that this truth was one he was desperately conflicted with. He desperately wanted to believe that was still true. In a way, it was endearing. If there was ever a favor that Fugaku had done Sasuke, it was to let him be a child for as long as he was.

"Oh, it was nothing special, Sasuke. A few documents. Forged passports, things to make sure you, me and your brother remained safe," Shisui pointed out with an unnaturally cheerful tone. He hoped that he could lift the spirits of the young one— to keep him from sinking into the despair of their situation. Itachi tilted his head to face the other, unable to tell if he was telling the truth or not. It was a talent of his, that much was true. A young man with the talent to make even the bleakest of situations seem as though they had a speck of hope within them.

Sasuke pouted slightly, going back to playing with the bandages. "These things really hurt, Shisui. Can I take them off already?" The answer was met with a large head that would ruffle his hair. He blushed slightly and put his hand over the spot the moment they pulled away. It was Shisui's laugh he ended up hearing, but Itachi's voice.

"Sorry, Sasuke. Maybe in a few days. I promise that when you open your eyes again, it'll be a good sight."

"That's not fair!"

"Sort of how it's not fair I'm the most talented between your brother and I," Shisui chimed in jest. "Trust me though, he's right. Things will be so much better once you have those eyes healed. We might not have your father anymore, but you have his eyes now. It'll be like a piece of him is always with you, and that's a good thing."

The explanation seemed to relax the boy somewhat, but still sulking, he turned his head in the direction of Shisui's voice. "Yeah but that's got nothing to do with the bandages and why I have to wear them." Despite his protests, he moved his hands away from them,instead playing with the hem of his untucked dress shirt. He couldn't understand why they did as they did, nor why they wouldn't let him be more comfortable. The itch that came from beneath the coverings were driving him crazy. Before he was able to raise his hands again however, one hand from either side took his own in theirs'. Itachi squeezed his brother's hand particularly hard— a small comfort for both of them.

Made brave by this, the three walked in the night together— until Sasuke fell asleep. It was at this point that the two Uchihas still awake decided to set up camp.

Once a fire was lit, Sasuke was placed right by it, beside Itachi who stared into the flames. On his other side sat Shisui, who also did the same. The only sound that broke the silence was the crackling of the flames that consumed the small dead branches and plants found to feed it.

"This is such a small fire. Do you think we should use our fire jutsu to make it larger," Shisui suggested whilst using a piece of deadwood to push the other pieces closer to the center of the fire.

Itachi would shake his head. "No...we need to conserve our chakra in case we're ambushed. Not everyone in the world has chakra, but everyone this far away from a town has a gun. Meanwhile, we have none. If we arent completely alert, we'll end up being killed...or worse."

Shisui took a deep breath at this and continued to move the firewood around, his sharingan eyes observing the fire and it's movements carefully. At one moment, it blew to the left, and another, it moved to the right, before a massive gust came and went, nearly putting out the flames. "It looks like there's a dust storm coming. It's a while off, but not far enough that we can get to safety before it's here. We should likely find a cave in which to wait it out."

"I agree. It'll also cover our tracks, meaning that we'll be able to start out without anyone knowing in which direction we went."

"So I guess that's it then? From now on we'll just be hopping from place to place, running with the targets on our backs?"

Itachi scoffed slightly and smiled the slightest bit. "No. All we have to do is find a place willing to take us in. We're not just any outlaws, after all. We're members of the Uchiha. Chakra wielding outlaws to Konoha, but a valuable asset to some other nation, if they're willing to give us refuge."

"You make it sound so easy...but not every country and town is jumping at the opportunity to attack Konoha of all places. We came from there, we know the type of talent they have over your everyday person."

For once, Itachi nodded a this, a sinking feeling overcoming him. The intensity at which he stared at the fire only increased before suddenly watching the flames die with a powerful gust of the wind that swirled around them. The chill overcame the three of them, and very quickly, the brother acted by placing the warmest of the three coats ontop of his younger brother. His eyes slowly shut as he picked him up. "So long as they take Sasuke...that'll be fine."

Shisui watched Itachi for a moment before sighing. "I see. So we'll be heading west, I presume."

"Yes, Suna is the closest major town from where we stand. I assume that Fugaku had planned it this way. Do the Uchiha have secret allies there?"

"We had a...contact. Not affiliated with the government there but something substantial. He's very capable of taking care of Sasuke. An outlaw with similar techniques to our own."

It was a statement that caught Itachi's attention, and with a moment of thought, it seemed to click for him. "So he's been placed on the wanted list too?" As Shisui placed the coat over the shoulders of the one holding the youngest, his sharingan would swirl as it changed into it's ultimate form once again— the mangekyou sharingan.

"Then let's go."


End file.
